Name: A Recipe for Bologna Sausage
Ingredients: various meats (beef, hog cheek meat, beef hearts, hog neck-fat, pork shoulders, beef and pork trimmings, beef head meat); 1 lb saltpeter per 10 gallons of pickle; 30 oz salt per 100 lbs of fresh material

Why it works: Beef and pork match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,690 recipes. Both carry 12-methyltridecanal, which smells tallowy, beefy. The science ↓

A Recipe for Bologna Sausage

Ingredients

various meats (beef, hog cheek meat, beef hearts, hog neck-fat, pork shoulders, beef and pork trimmings, beef head meat)
1 lb saltpeter per 10 gallons of pickle
30 oz salt per 100 lbs of fresh material

Directions

Chop all meats finely.
Prepare a pickle with 1 lb of saltpeter per 10 gallons of water.
If using fresh material, add 30 oz of salt for every 100 lbs of meat.
Stuff the mixture into beef rounds or middles.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

Beef + porktop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,690 recipes

Shared aroma: 12-methyltridecanal (tallowy, beefy).
Meat + porktop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,208 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Meat + beeftop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,533 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).